topic: uncertainty

To anyone worried about climate change the announcement by Lockheed Martin that it is developing a fusion reactor that will be ready for market within ten years could be seen as a cause for hope. Though I’ve yearned for this development for years, now I’m not so sure. Our technologies are causing ecological degradation and climate change. But what is technology except an amplifier of the effects that our minds have on the world? It […]

When I was younger, it never occurred to me that most of what I said might not ‘get through’ to the other person. Similarly, I believed that I understood most of what was said to me. I no longer feel that way. Now it seems to me that thoughts survive the leap from one person to another only very rarely. Mostly, we are islands to each other. I do not see this as a cause […]

I have an abiding distrust – dislike, even – of certainty. If there is one thing I have learned about life it is that we can not really be certain of anything much at all. Thus, it seems to me that when a human pronounces that he/she is absolutely certain of something, what they are expressing is a belief that feels to them to be necessary to their psychological wellbeing… It is, of course, uncomfortable […]